


The Solo Legend

by Scoby



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Deserved Better, Canon Universe, Dominant Kylo Ren, Evil Corporations, F/M, Finn's possible parents, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghost Leia Organa, Force Ghost Luke Skywalker, Force Ghost(s), Force Sex (Star Wars), Inappropriate Use of the Force, Jedi Training (Star Wars), Light Dom/sub, Love, Parenthood, Parents Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Pregnant Rey (Star Wars), Redeemed Ben Solo, Redemption, Reylo Baby, Tantric Ben Solo, Teenage Drama, Temiri Blagg/Reylo's daughter's BFF, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000, graphic depictions of violent tickling, reylo family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 06:06:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 21,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23966608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scoby/pseuds/Scoby
Summary: “I can’t wait to see how great a Jedi she’ll become!” Leia celebrated.Then Rey said aloud the thought that had been surfacing on her mind the whole day: “What if she doesn’t want to be a Jedi?”“What else would she want? With all the Skywalker and Palpatine blood fused in her, born from the legendary dyad in the Force, what else could there be of meaning? It’s her des…”
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wondering how it would all be like, having a relationship with somebody who forms a dyad with you - living together, working together and raising a child who is expected to become even more crazily powerful with the Force. So that's what I want to explore here, and of course also give Ben Solo a chance to live <3

“It seems like Temiri cannot sense the sting beams when they approach his head from the left”, Ben said thoughtfully, looking down at his plate. “Sounds like unresolved issues with his mother, possibly with both parents”, Rey responded. “We need to help him”, Ben continued. “We know all about that.” “I can take them through a generational meditation tomorrow”, Rey suggested. “Please keep an eye on Temiri and help him when he gets into trouble. I’m sure it will happen.”

Ben nodded and smiled at her, reached for a brief kiss and returned to eating. He admired Rey’s skill with that meditation. Last time she taught it, several students had achieved a clear breakthrough with their relation to the Force. And Ben knew all about Rey’s own struggle that she had come through to get ready to teach that practice.

They were excited about the progress Temiri could make after resolving what was behind him. He had showed up in their class about half a year ago. The other students had started several months earlier, so they had been hesitant to take newcomers who would be so far behind. But after hearing his story, they could not refuse.

Temiri Blagg had escaped the fathier stables at Canto Bight, where he had worked as a slave for years. He had run straight to the parking lot of the nearby casino and sensed exactly which ship he should hide into. When he had crawled out of his hiding place under the floor panel, he had been on a new planet and in a strange town. The world around him had been different from anything he had imagined - and he had imagined a lot during the long years at the stables.

But there had been one direction where he had felt a magnetic pull. And to that direction he had walked, until after several hours and blisters in his feet, he had walked straight into the temple where Ben and Rey had been finishing a class. Since then, he had rapidly caught up with the other students in almost everything, except for the training remote that kept haunting his left cheek with stings.

“Everyone else seems to be doing well with the training remote”, Rey contemplated. “Emma, Keishi and Mick are still missing it often, but I don’t see any major issue behind it.” Ben agreed with her: “It’s like they can sense everything but just don’t trust enough to act on it. They’ll just need a bit more practice to let go.”

They finished their dinner mostly in silence. As Rey stood up to take the empty dishes to their kitchen area, she felt a familiar soft touch on her neck. She laid the dishes down on the counter and turned around. Ben had sat on the sofa on the other side of the room. The dining table was between them, so Rey couldn’t fully see him, but she knew he had slightly extended his hand to caress her through their Force bond. Invisible fingers moved from her neck to her shoulder and down her side, ignoring the draped fabric of her tunic and going straight for the skin underneath.

That touch always made Rey tremble. She closed her eyes to feel more of the warmth and electricity emanating from Ben’s hand. “Ben, please, come here and touch me for real”, she asked, but Ben just smiled. “Real? Isn’t this real?” He slid his hand down tracing the curve of her hip, then down her thigh and leg.

Ignoring the floor she was standing on, his hand slipped under her foot to caress its arch. Then he made his way up again, along her leg, up her inner thigh, between her legs and inside her. She was getting unbearably wet and she knew how exactly he could feel it. She already saw the tips of his fingers glossy with fluid as he lifted them up to his nose to smell them.

Impatient with desire, Rey reached out her whole hand and directed a beam of vibration through their bond straight at his cock. She could feel it growing and hardening under her palm. Ben was struck motionless by a wave of pleasure and love. Then Rey stopped, pulled her hand back and smiled innocently. “Ok, that’s enough”, Ben admitted. “Now you come here.” He floated Rey through the air like a feather, over the table between them, right into his arms and into a long, savored kiss. 

They undressed each other gently and let their bodies entangle. Ben pulled Rey closer to his chest and felt her melt around his cock. The Force bond between them curled up into a swirling circle that fed them both with an abundance of joy, love and pleasure. They let the swirl light up and trickle sparkles around them in the Force, feeding the balance and the peace.

They had fought so hard to bring balance to the Force and nowadays nourished that balance with the opposite of fighting. Drunk with bliss, they both fell asleep on the sofa. Ben noticed this when waking up at midnight, with numb feet falling off the edge. He carried Rey to bed and pulled a blanket over them. 

\- - - - -

When he woke up again in the morning, Rey was already up. Ben sensed a stern and unpleasant vibration in the force. Apparently, Rey had already gone to the temple to practice the same meditation she was about to teach, as that was how she usually liked to get focused.

Ben was not a fan of the generational meditation, as it forced him to look at painful things, though he had got a lot more settled with it over a year of teaching and living with Rey. It still had never become pleasant, and right now, as the other half of their dyad was in the process of facing her ancestors, some of that experience trickled also into Ben’s field.

He took a few soothing breaths, dressed up in one of the dark grey shirts and pants that were all similar and thus easy to choose from, and followed Rey to the temple. There she was at the front of the little hall, sitting tall in the air just slightly above the ground. She looked calm and peaceful, though Ben knew that she was sitting face to face with her grandfather. He admired how profound peace she had made with him.

Ben sat next to Rey in silence until the kids started arriving one by one from their dormitories – or houses in the case of those who were lucky to have their families in the same town. As the weekend was approaching, many of them would be flying back to their home planets tonight and were already excited. 

“Good morning, Master Skywalker! Good morning, Master Solo!” each of them greeted and hurried to their place, whispering among each other about their plans for the weekend. Ben could see Temiri looking at others quietly and in his own thoughts. He didn’t remember Temiri ever leaving this town after arriving.

Ben recalled many similar experiences from his own training. When the lessons of the week were over and other kids rushed to embrace their parents and take off towards their home planets, he would usually receive a holovid of his mother explaining that unfortunately both she and dad were too busy to pick him up this time but that next weekend he could come home for sure. Over time, he stopped caring about it, stopped even opening his mother’s holovids and just buried himself to study more during the weekends. 

As everyone had sat down, Rey started teaching in a soft voice: “A Jedi’s support are all who came before him or her, be it in blood or in the same cause or just in the Force. Today we will look at those who came before us in blood, and we will offer them our…”

Here her voice made just the slightest tremble.

“…unconditional gratitude, because even if they would have done poorly as our parents or grandparents or ancestors, they still did the best they could in their circumstances and we owe them our chance to be alive. First, close your eyes and see them in front of you, in a line that extends back to eternity. You might not know all those people and how they look like. Just open your heart, set the intention and let the Force show you who should accompany you here.”

Temiri already started to shake and tears trickled from his eyes. Ben stepped quietly next to him and placed his hand on the tiny shoulder. “Temiri, it’s ok, I’m here for you if you are in trouble,” he said. “Master Solo, I got so afraid and lonely”, Temiri said in a quivering but brave voice. “I cannot see anybody. My parents left me when I was so small I can’t remember them. All I have of them is a blurry holovid where they explain that they went to join the Resistance and that it was their sacrifice for the best of my future, but I can’t see how it possibly could have been for anything good. I’m just so angry at them for leaving me behind.” Temiri buried his little head into Ben’s chest and sobbed.

“Temiri, it’s all ok”, Ben assured. “Even if you don’t see anybody in this practice, even if you are afraid, lonely and angry, it’s ok. Just go ahead and feel those feelings. On the other side, you might find something or you might not. Any outcome is ok. I can sit with you if you want.” Rest of the meditation they sat next to each other. Ben gathered up a bubble out of the Force around the little boy and poured in his power to help him feel safe. Inside the bubble, Ben could sense that he was still in fear and anger, but finally at peace with it.

Rey’s voice started to approach the end of the meditation: “Now turn your attention to those who will come after you. We don’t know who those are but they are still the reason why we do anything we do, so we offer them…” 

Something interrupted her.

Instinctively, Ben’s eyes opened and were locked with hers. They felt for a brief moment like being in a free fall, though none of them moved. Rey shook it off quickly, smiled briefly and continued: “…we offer them our blessing and gratitude for giving us meaning.”

\- - - - -

As they were finishing dinner that night, the same happened again. Just like the floor had been cut off, they fell downwards, until the floor reappeared and they hit it, even though nothing really moved. And both could sense an alteration in their Force bond, like one of its chords would have changed its frequency.

“What was that?” Ben gasped. “I’ve never felt anything like that.”

Rey hesitated briefly before speaking slowly and surely: “I know. And I think you know it, too. Say it.”

At that moment, it became clear to Ben, too. But he couldn’t speak, as a sense of fear swept over him so forcefully that it was about to choke him. At last, the words came out of him one by one:

“It’s… It’s our baby.”

Rey nodded. “Yes, that’s what we are sensing. And you’re afraid. Why?”

“Well look at me”, Ben started to raise his voice. “Look at where I’ve come from. How could I possibly be any good as a father? This has all been such a terrible mistake, me thinking that I could share a life with you.”

“Ben, listen to yourself, you know that’s not true. I love you and I want a life exactly with you. And I don’t have the best background to be a mother either. But I know that we are not our past and we can make our own choices. We can be as great parents as we choose to be. Are you with me?”

Ben nodded. “I’ll be with you, yes, there’s just a lot I need to feel through first.” 

He ran straight out of the door and into the woods. He ignited his lightsaber, letting its blue blade and crossguard illuminate the treetrunks under the gathering dusk. With haphazard blows, he stroke down a bunch of trees and smashed them against a cliff. As that was not enough, he tore down the whole cliff with the sheer power of all the shame that he was letting loose from inside him.

Indoors, Rey could hear his outraged screams and a crushing noise resembling a roaring herd of banthas. But through the Force, she could feel the purity and light of his energy behind the audible noise. And the release of the chords of shame from the other side of their Force bond felt like a weight lifted off her back, too.

When Ben returned indoors, he was out of breath and sobbing. He buried his head in Rey’s lap and cried until he was out of tears. Then he lay still as if to listen.

When he turned his head to look up at Rey, she smiled and asked: “Can you feel her, too?”

“Yes”, Ben whispered. “I can feel our daughter.”


	2. Chapter 2

After half a year more of almost weekly practice with the training remote, each one of the kids had mastered it. Sitting and watching their progress made Rey deeply happy, especially when looking at the ease with which Temiri blocked the sting beams on the left of his head. She stood up, first levitating herself up to mid-air, then unfolding her legs and descending softly on the ground. That was the easiest way she had found to move with her belly.

“Ok, we are ready to add some challenge to this”, she said with excitement. With Ben, they set up a narrow plank between two blocks for each kid and one for themselves for demonstration.

“We’ll first keep the planks low, close to the ground. Just step on it and do the same practice, with the blindfold helmet on. Remember, it is totally the same practice. Don’t let the plank scare you. It's just another thing to be aware of. Stay open to the Force and trust your instincts. I’ll show you.”

“Are you sure?” Ben asked quietly, glancing at her belly. “I can do it as well…”

Rey just swiftly nodded at his direction, already climbing on the plank, closing her blindfold, switching on the training remote and igniting her lightsaber. She still moved fast, blocking every beam with the yellow laser.

Until she had a sensation with no warning through the Force. The skin a bit to the right from her navel got hit by a sting beam from the outside, while the baby kicked the same spot from the inside. The lightsaber fell of Rey’s hand and she fell of the plank, holding the burning skin.

But Ben had no problem sensing what was happening and was ready to catch Rey. The training remote still tried to shoot them with occasional beams. He blocked a few of them with his lightsaber, until it was quiet long enough for him to call it into his hand and turn it off.

“You got the point, right?” He asked the class. As everyone nodded, he gestured them to start their own practice and turned to Rey.

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah. Just stung. I don’t know why I couldn’t sense it at all… Does my field end where hers is starting? She definitely could sense it. She kicked at the same spot exactly at the moment when it hit, not as a reaction to the sting.”

This incident provided some confirmation to what Ben had been suspecting. He had naturally been curious about how much the baby would integrate with their dyad and had been spending a lot of time in meditation with Rey, trying to tune into the little being.

But it was not as easy as tuning into Rey. Through the Force bond, he could still only reach Rey, nothing more. It was like the growing baby kept carving a hole in their shared field, filling it with her own independent being, out of their immediate reach.

How would it work after she would be born? Neither Ben nor Rey had experience of living with somebody _without_ being Force-bonded to them, apart from their own childhood. The thought of not feeling their daughter inside out the same way they felt each other was frightening.

On the other hand, they were grateful for the apparent possibility that the baby would escape their dyad. After all, when growing up, she would appreciate if her parents could not sense her every feeling. Ben and Rey knew from their own relationship that it was very convenient when so few things had to be said aloud, but sometimes frustrating when nothing could be kept private.

With some effort, Ben managed to convince Rey to sit down for the rest of the class. Rest of the afternoon, he kept circulating the hall, helping students who got frustrated or distracted, cheering when they did well and helping them fix fallen planks back on the blocks.

When they were done, Ben walked back up to Rey and offered her his hand to help her stand up.

“Will you float me home?” she asked.


	3. Chapter 3

Jae definitely turned out to be an independent baby, perhaps even more than they had expected. No matter how much they would try to tune into her through the Force, most of the time they had no idea what was going on inside her. When they once more woke up into Jae’s scream in the middle of the night, Rey shouted at her in frustration: “You don’t need to cry, sweetheart! We can hear you through the Force. Just wake us up gently and tell us what’s the matter.”

But the crying continued, just like it did most of the nights for as long as it took to figure out by trial an error what was bothering Jae. Rey had had one blissful experience of having Jae silently show her through the Force exactly how she wanted to be touched and held when her stomach was in pain. When Rey had followed her instructions, she had seen the pain just melt away from the baby.

She had felt like the best Jedi in history, possibly the best mother as well. But it had apparently been an anomaly, just something Jae had been trying out along with all the various movements and sounds. Most of the time, she didn’t bother about the Force and slipped into her audible, sometimes way too audible voice.

Ben turned to his back, reached out his hand a little and extended it through the Force to gently caress Jae’s back. She took a small break in crying and they already let out a sigh of relief. But in less than a minute she started again and louder. “Looks like she wants a real touch this time, and maybe milk”, Rey sighed and stood up.

As soon as she picked up Jae, she could feel the milk rushing into her breasts and saw a familiar puckered expression on Jae’s lips. “So that’s what you want”, she said to her silently through the Force so as to strengthen that pathway of communication. “Tell it to me like this next time, will you?”

Rey couldn’t stay mad at the little being, though, not as soon as she clenched her lips around her nipple and sucked and Rey felt the warm milk flow outwards. Her whole heart burst full of love and bliss. The connection they missed in the Force they still did share through their bodies.

When Jae was content and both the breasts empty, Rey placed the baby back down to sleep, still with a tired smile on her face. She crawled next to Ben and drowned her nose into his scent. She remembered this scent from all the way back to the first times they were connected through the Force. Then it used to be more fused with leather and often with blood, but the base was his sweat, which smelled the same in both Kylo Ren and Ben Solo.

With Kylo Ren, their bond would typically open with a slight sense of his presence followed instantly by his scent. The visual image of him would only appear a moment later, if at all. Sometimes she would just sense the presence and the scent for a few seconds without anything else happening. Those were like reminders that he was with her. And those moments, when his intoxicating scent persistently occupied the air she was breathing, drove her mad with a mixture of rage, hope and lust.

Without her saying anything, Ben’s mind was dragged along into memories of the same times. “These past nights have been like the nights in the First Order”, he said aloud. “Hux would often sound the alarm in the middle of the night to have everyone prepare for an attack he called urgent. Most of those attacks never happened. It was just his way to be in control.”

“Really, did he wake you up this often?”

“Not exactly this often. But usually, when I would have had a chance to sleep, I wasted it thinking about you. I used to wonder where you were and if you were safe, relive in my mind all the brief moments with you, memorize every flavor of your scent, guess what temperature your skin would be at the moment, how it would taste to kiss you, what would be under your clothes…” That made them both laugh.

“Well, I didn’t sleep that well either”, Rey confessed and then chuckled nervously. “It’s weird to talk about him to you. But you know, there are some things that I do miss about Kylo Ren. I miss fighting him. And I miss his eyes that were so ready to hunt me down anywhere in the galaxy. I could feel them burning on me even through his mask, and through space, sometimes even when I didn’t see him. And I miss how he was such a freaking supreme leader who could take whatever he wanted. I used to dream that one day he would take me.”

“And would you want him to? Right now?” Ben whispered, a tone creeping into his voice that Rey had not heard in a long time. She could see his eyes darken into a deeper shade than the night around them and feel more darkness gather up in their dyad on his side, meeting her light and pulling it irresistibly. She could sense that its intention was pure love and to have it, she would only need to surrender. Faintly she whispered: “Yes.”

Ben took a moment to grow a bubble out of the Force around Jae’s cradle, to make sure they would not to wake her up but could still hear if she would cry again. Then he turned back to Rey, now again as Kylo Ren whose presence she recognized right away. The only difference was that last time it had been utterly confusing, as she was supposed to hate him despite the intoxicating magnetic pull towards him. Now, with no war between them, the confusion was gone and all that was left was the surrender to the pull.

Kylo drew Rey’s blanket away, consuming her body with his gaze. He traced his finger down through the air, and Rey’s nightshirt ripped up in two and the pieces slid off her. She felt a flutter of electricity follow the line where the fabric broke apart, between her breasts, down across her belly and between her legs. Kylo threw off his own sleeping clothes and grabbed her wrists into a comfortable but non-negotiable grip. He forced her hands over her head and covered her naked body with his.

He smelled and kissed her neck and let his lips and teeth glide down to her breasts, making her nipples tighten and her whole body arch. He opened her legs with his knees and drowned his cock into her, feeling for every shape and texture in her flesh.

“You’re mine, Rey, you’re so mine”, he whispered in her ear as he made his way deeper and let his whole weight fall on her. Rey’s whole world became his body, and her mind went blank. The only word she had was a whispered “yes”. The only experience she had were the ever-rising waves of pleasure. When she was almost sure she couldn’t take any more, Kylo sat up.

Without touching her, he through her across the room on the wall. He kept her there motionless, hovering above the ground at his own height. He still sat on the bed and just watched her. Rey had never felt as naked as this, never even thought it would be possible to feel this naked. When Kylo Ren finally walked up to her, her skin grew itchy of the electricity that intensified with every step. He stopped in front of her, close enough for her to touch him, if he just would let her move. 

He leaned his forearms on the wall on both sides of her head. Rey could hear in his breath and feel in his kiss how equally desperate he was to have her immediately. He locked her eyes deep into his and penetrated her first with his sheer energy and then with his cock. Rey thought she would be crushed between the wall and this man who was dark again, thrusting all his dark love from the depths of his torn soul into her body. She drifted away of space and time into a wave of orgasms.

When Rey came back to her senses, she was again with Ben, who released her from the wall into his arms and carried back to bed. Neither of them had words to each other, apart from quiet gratitude handed back and forth through their Force bond.


	4. Chapter 4

When Jae was five years old, Ben and Rey reckoned that she could start her training. The day before she was about to join the other new students at the temple, they spent the whole day making preparations under a tense atmosphere. They constructed her a short lightsaber, which refused to work until they had disassembled and reassembled it three times, with sharp arguments between each round. They ate a badly burned dinner in an uncomfortable silence. Towards the evening, Jae went crazy, refusing to go to sleep, pulling out all her toys and spreading them around the house while singing her own songs, which were loud and very repetitive.

After several attempts of asking her to stop, Ben finally, with a single lift of his arm, gathered all the toys as a bundle in his hands and smashed them on the floor of Jae’s room. He was about to fly the girl in, too, but pulled himself together and, instead, kneeled at her level and said calmly: “And now you go to sleep. We will read for you.”

That worked, as always. Jae loved to hear them read. She only had a few storybooks, which she wanted to hear over and over again. Ben was the only one of them who could read fluently, but Rey learned the stories by heart fast and would often participate by playing the voices of some of the characters. Sometimes they would make Jae’s toys act the story. And while doing all of this, they would deliberately light up their Force bond, letting it trickle a soothing vibration on their child.

After finishing, Ben closed the book and gently floated it across the room onto its place on the shelf. “Think about it, Jae, tomorrow you will start to learn to do that. Isn’t it fun?” Rey asked.

“To read?”

After a bit of hesitation, Rey elaborated: “Actually, we don’t read in our school. But Dad will teach you at home if you want to learn. And at school you’ll learn to float your books and toys and everything to where you want them to go.”

“And is that more important?”

Jae’s question got Rey out of words. Ben kissed Jae’s cheek, pulled the blanket tighter around her and responded: “We cannot know what is most important for you. But you will find the right things for you to learn, through the Force, and at school you will find out how. Good night, sweetheart.”

Gratefully Rey took Ben’s hand and they turned off the lights and closed Jae’s door behind them. “Does she have a point? Should we teach the kids to read? How to even…” Rey started, but noticed that Ben was too tired to re-evaluate their curriculum now. But under the exhaustion, she could see something else. She saw he was definitely aroused, and as soon as she became aware of it, she was instantly pulled in, too.

She did not know yet which of her men would inhabit his body tonight – Ben Solo who would worship her and wrap her into a sweet cocoon of light, or Kylo Ren who would ravish her to the bones. Sometimes she would reach out to one of them herself, depending on whose presence she particularly craved for. But more often, she would enjoy the ride of letting him embody whoever was arising, sometimes even intertwined or changing from one moment to the next. Right now, at the end of such a miserable day that had left her feeling like a useless and utterly uncivilized mother, she knew exactly whom she wanted. She grabbed the soft, dark grey fabric of Ben’s shirt and said: “Fuck me, Kylo.”

Just as she saw his eyes begin to darken, they both became aware of a light shimmering on their side in a light shade of blue. Rey let quickly go of Ben and they both turned to face the Force ghost of Luke Skywalker. Rey managed to speak first: “M-Master Skywalker, welcome.”

“Emmm, is it a bad time?” Luke asked.

“Kind of…” Ben replied.

“We are here to see her!” Leia’s excited voice filled the air as she appeared at Luke’s side. “Is that her room?”

“Yes, but do you really have to go now, Mom?” Ben tried. “I mean, she just went to sleep, and tomorrow is an important day.”

“Well, we wouldn’t make any noise. And I don’t think she can even see us yet as she is not trained”, Leia insisted.

“You can come tomorrow”, Rey suggested. “You can walk with us to the temple in the morning. In any case, it’s not that nice of you to just show up in our house without a warning.”

“I did reach out to warn you”, Luke said in defense. “I just saw your mind was busy with something else. I couldn’t tell what it was, but we thought that a surprise visit would be better than no visit at all.”

“Actually, there was something I was thinking about”, Rey recalled. “Should jedi learn to read?”

“And what would you have them read?” Luke asked.

“Maybe… sacred Jedi texts…” Rey replied and they both chuckled. “Or then, maybe just stories. Something about the worlds they are supposed to protect. I read so poorly myself… Ben is teaching me a bit but it’s so difficult. I wish now that somebody had taught me early on.”

“Then maybe they should learn it”, Luke responded thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Every day the Force will show you the most important lesson to share. Are you doing that practice, revealing the lesson of the day?”

Rey and Ben both nodded. “Then good, you don’t need to worry”, Luke smiled. “One day, the lesson that shows up might be reading, and then you will teach it the best you can.”

“Thank you, Master”, Rey nodded and let her gaze wonder towards the front door as a gesture of hinting Luke and Leia to leave. Ben found himself looking at the same direction, even though knowing that the Force ghosts would not really be using the front door to exit. But what other polite way could there be to hint a Force ghost to leave? 

Leia was not yet finished, though. “Oh, how you two look beautiful together! I watch the Force signature of your dyad all the time. It’s shining so bright these days. But it’s been a long while since I’ve seen your physical forms. Ben, is this still the lightest color you wear?”

Rey hurried to respond before him, with a giggle: “Actually, the kids dressed him up in beige the other day. It looked hilarious. Let me show you the hologram...” “No, not that one!” Ben tried to stop her, but Rey had already extended her hand to call to her a little holopad that they kept on a shelf on the back wall of the living room. Before it had flown halfway, Ben also had his hand extended, palm raised to stop the flight of the pad. It was left hovering in the air, making little shakes back and forth as the two greatest Jedi of their time were fighting for it with all their power.

“I just want to show your mother one simple hologram”, Rey hissed through her teeth. “It’s embarrassing”, Ben hissed back and the battle continued, but not for long. The metal casing around the device gave in with a crackling sound. One piece of the holopad flew into Rey’s hand, while Ben pushed the other one with a crash to the wall behind the shelf. From the wall, it fell back on the shelf, bringing down flakes of paint with it.

At that moment, they heard a click of a door handle and saw Jae’s head peek out of her room, eyes squinting at the living room lights. “I need to pee. What’s that?” 

“Nothing, the holopad just broke”, Rey explained quickly.

Jae gave out a sigh which made it obvious to Luke and Leia that she had seen similar fights before.

“Actually, I was meaning that.” She pointed straight next to the dining table, right where Luke and Leia were standing. “There’s something different, like the shape of the air is strange. And something coming towards me, like somebody would be watching.” Suddenly she laughed for no reason, right when Luke made an act of rolling his nose around and growing it bigger.

“Your grandmother and granduncle are visiting”, Ben explained. “I think you can sense their presence. In time you will learn to see them, too.” Then he turned to follow something across the room and asked: “Mom, what are you doing?”

Leia walked straight up to Jae and kissed her on the forehead. The girl passed a hand over her forehead like swiping out a tickling hair. Leia smiled, looked straight into Jae’s unfocused eyes and said, confident about being heard in a way or another: “Look how cute and powerful you are. We are so proud of you beginning your training tomorrow. Know that we’ll always be with you and we love you.”

Jae shrugged her shoulders and continued her way to the bathroom.

“I can’t wait to see how great a Jedi she’ll become!” Leia celebrated.

Then Rey said aloud the thought that had been surfacing on her mind the whole day: “What if she doesn’t want to be a Jedi?”

“What else would she want?” Luke wondered. “With all the Skywalker and Palpatine blood fused in her, born from the legendary dyad in the Force, what else could there be of meaning? It’s her des…”

“If I would follow that logic, I would be sitting on the Sith throne right now”, Rey interrupted. “Of course we will train her the best we can, and I can already see that she’s strong with the Force. I’m just saying that we don’t yet know the way the Force wants to express through her.”

They were all silent when Jae walked back across the room and to her bed. “Well, we’d better get going and let you sleep”, Leia started. “We’ll be there tomorrow.” Luke’s figure was already starting to fade when Leia grabbed his arm and said: “Let’s use the front door.”

Ben opened the front door for them and walked with them to the yard. Luke had already faded away when Leia still turned back to Ben to say: “How about, next time when you’re having an argument about some object, you would just let her have it, just for a while?”

“But then she would have it!” Ben’s hands tightened into fists and rage crept into his voice.

“Never mind, it was just a suggestion”, Leia said and vanished into the night air.

When Ben returned inside, he saw Rey, fallen asleep on the sofa. An avalanche of heart-bursting love shattered through his being. Down to the depths of his soul, he was filled with awe about how this amount of beauty and goodness could ever have arrived this close to him.

Ben let his fingers trace Rey’s hair, eyebrow, ear, cheek, nose, collarbone, arm, each finger and toe. He planted a kiss at the corner of her eye and snuffled her hair. Then he carefully slid his arms under her and carried her to bed. He curled up next to her, drew a blanket over them and took her hands in his, pulling them close enough that he could still softly kiss her fingertips to his heart’s content before closing his eyes and drifting to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

When they all hurried out a little bit too late the next morning, a similar shade of blue light was greeting them right by their door. But it did not radiate from Luke and Leia only. Hundreds of Jedi from the past had gathered in their yard as a blue shimmering mass. Everybody wanted to see the new Skywalker begin her training.

Jae looked straight down with a confused expression that Ben and Rey knew well from the lessons when students first started to practice interaction with a Force ghost. It was very common for kids to feel like they suddenly were not wearing anything, before they learned to settle and relax their mind into opening up to seeing the other being. This must have hit Jae intensely now that she was facing hundreds of curious beings.

Ben grabbed her shoulder and assured: “Your clothes are still on and fine. There are just a lot of beings present here and you feel their gaze, just like last night at home. They are friendly and you are safe with us. Just be yourself.”

As they proceeded, the crowd of ghosts opened into a path for them to walk through. The silent crowd followed them all the way to the temple. As they entered, Rey gave them all a nod to signal that this was enough and they were not welcome further.

They closed the door behind them and added an invisible door they gathered of the Force in order to keep the ghosts out. Both let out a sigh of relief. This was far more stressful than a normal first day of a new class. Just if the attention from the Force ghosts was not enough, they could notice several new kids in the hall whispering among themselves and staring at their daughter.

Rey stayed with the newcomers as Ben took the advanced students into the woods for an elemental connection practice. Finally Rey felt something going right, as this was her specialty: teaching her most playful practices to guarantee everyone a joyful encounter with the Force and what it could do. They played blindfold hide-and-seek and treasure hunt, and spent the afternoon sitting in a tight circle, telling stories about unexplainable things that had happened to each of them through the Force.

Many of the kids had a lot of those experiences when they just stopped to reflect. In fact, these incidents were a common reason for kids to be sent to the Jedi school from all over the galaxy. Parents who had lots of practical worries were easily bothered by a kid who seemed to be constantly distracted with seeing things that were not there and moving objects unnaturally. Thus, they were considered odd and not really contributing to the family, and sending them away to study was a way to get them out of the way for a couple of years.

Rey and Ben had seen countless of times how lonely that kind of life could be. That is why they placed tremendous effort on giving everyone a sense that at least here they belonged to the group where others shared their weirdness even if it was judged outside. Now that they had been teaching their program for seven years, they had two classes of graduates who still showed up every year for a reunion, as this community was for many of them their closest family.

At the end of the day, Rey felt content about creating a successful start once again. When they returned home, the ghosts were gone and their hearts lighter. But the following weeks did not bring about much advancement for Jae. She more or less dragged along with the class and enjoyed the games but got easily bored and distracted with most of the more challenging practices. She did not show any interest in using her lightsaber. If a sting beam from a training remote would hit her blindfolded, she could perfectly sense it coming but was more interested in feeling the hit than blocking it. Overall, she seemed a lot more keen on all the things she could observe and receive through the Force rather than using the Force to do anything.

\- - - - -

After half a year of mostly miserable schooldays had passed, Ben and Rey decided to break the uncomfortable silence and let Jae make a decision which they were afraid but committed to hear. Jae’s door was closed, just like it had stayed very often during the past months. Ben knocked but the only response they heard was a loud “I want to be alone!”

“No, you are not alone, we want to help you”, Ben insisted. “We have an important question to you? Will you let us in? Please?”

The door opened though Jae was laying on her bed. She must have used the Fore willingly to open it, which was an intriguing sign for them as her teachers. But as her parents, they had a more pressing agenda. Rey broke straight into it: “Jae, do you want to be a Jedi?”

Jae sat up with confused eyes and voice. “Are you asking me that?”

“Of course we are, darling”, Ben said softly while kneeling down next to her. Tears were filling up his eyes. “Did you… Did you think that we would force you?” 

Even though Jae was outside of Ben and Rey’s dyad, she still could not watch her father cry without breaking into tears herself. “I just thought that was what you wanted…” she said through her tears. “Because of what you are, and how people look at you, and me, even those people that I can’t see yet. And I really want to be good for you. But everything at school just goes wrong. I heard El and Rhim talk about me the other day. They were so far away they must have thought I couldn’t hear, but somehow I still could, through the Force. They said that you only keep me in the school because I am your daughter and famous, though everyone can see that I’m… I’m n-nothing.”

Jae and Rey could see fury rising up in Ben’s eyes and his fists tightening, but Jae quickly touched his shoulder and tried to soothe him: “No, Dad, please don’t do anything to them. It was not nicely said, but I know I was meant to hear it, because then I understood it. I don’t want to be a Jedi, ever.”

This was exactly the answer Ben and Rey had been dreading. But now that it finally came out of her, it was easier to bear than they had imagined. It sounded natural, in fact, like the Force had been preparing them for this all the time when bombarding them with arguments and tense atmosphere whenever trying to fit Jae into a box that was not her shape.

They could sense their Force bond lighting up brighter than it had been in many months, now that they let got of the pressure of raising the next Skywalker. The daughter of the legendary dyad in the Force was not going to be a Jedi, and the rest of the galaxy would just have to deal with it.

Rey also knelt down next to Ben and Jae and asked: “What do you want then, darling?” Jae dried her tears, hesitated a moment and then said aloud: “When we’ve been going to the town and you’ve been letting me wait for you outside the shops, I’ve gone many times to look through the windows of the school there. The kids there are so different. I think I would fit in there because I’m also so different here. In that school they read books, and write, and paint, and sing. And when they meditate, they sit on the ground and not hovering above it. Mom, Dad, please let me go there!”

\- - - - -

And that school was where she started the following week. When she left by herself the first morning towards the town on her little speeder, Ben and Rey could not stop looking after her figure until it utterly disappeared from their field of vision. During the day ahead, it was impossible to stop thinking about her. Both kept reaching out to her trying to sense if she was safe and happy, but that was all in vane. They had no access to their daughter in the way they had to each other, and that day it felt unbearable. Minutes passed like hours, haunted by the thought that it might have been a terrible mistake to send a little kid into a strange school so far away all alone.

But in the evening, Jae arrived home safely. In fact, she had not just survived safely but was clearly lit up by the day. At last, she stood taller and laughed louder than she had done in months. And this went on. Within a year, she learned to read, write, draw, paint, all those skills she had been longing for but that were barely even discussed in the Jedi training. Her shelf of storybooks started to fill up with ones that she borrowed or received from her friends or wrote herself – first very short and full of pictures, later on longer ones with deeper and deeper content.

First Jae’s own room and bit by bit their whole house started to fill up with her artwork. Rey was easily mesmerized by it and could drift away into looking at a colorful wall for minutes. It had never even occurred to her that somebody might just paint for the sheer pleasure of looking. Also Jae’s own songs started to become a lot less repetitive and she became a joy to listen to and watch.


	6. Chapter 6

The students who had started their Jedi training together with Jae were about to graduate in just a few weeks. Rey had finished their afternoon class early so that she could explain them what to tell their families about the graduation ceremony and how to prepare for it. She was answering their final questions when an unexpected visitor walked in from the direction of the door.

Rey knew that all the kids could already see him. The most sensitive ones would even be able to sense from his presence who he was. To the rest, she introduced: “This is Master Luke Skywalker, my teacher and mentor.” All the kids greeted him in awe before Rey gestured them to head outside and leave the two of them alone.

“No young Skywalker?” Luke asked. “Where is Jae?”

“Actually, she prefers to be called Jae Solo.”

“Oh…” Luke seemed to be battling with disappointment he was embarrassed to show. “Not part of the Skywalker legend then?”

“No, it’s not for her”, Rey replied calmly, just as she had been preparing herself to reply, knowing that the question would inevitably come up. “But she is writing her own. I’m already seeing it. It’s just very different from ours.”

“Yes, the Solo legend has been quite different”, Luke contemplated.

“It’s legendary nonetheless”, Rey reminded. “Master Skywalker, don’t you see how much energy we are wasting by trying to constantly do things with the Force. Of course we need some Jedi to cultivate the balance in the Force, but there’s so much more to life than just that. When I look at Jae, it’s not like she is striving to make anything happen with the Force. She’s just opening herself up as a channel for the Force to express what it wants, and that brings up so much beauty. Ben explains it so that she’s feeding on the balance in the Force, rolling in it to let beautiful things arise. And for me, that makes it all worth it. All the sacrifices you made to bring balance to the Force, wasn’t it exactly for the purpose of people being able to savor it? I mean really savor, not just live in peace but really thrive and enrich the galaxy. Don’t you agree?”

“Well, I guess that’s possible”, Luke shrugged his translucent shoulders. “Come to see her some time, with Leia”, Rey suggested. “She could probably see you now. We didn’t quite finish that part of her training, but we can talk her through it in the moment and I think she’ll pick it up. She’s stronger with the Force now that we are not trying to make her a Jedi anymore. And I think she would like you.” “Ok, we’ll be there.” With that, Luke’s figure faded.

Rey walked through the space where Luke had just stood, up to the door and outside, where Ben was already waiting for her. As they knew that they had finished early and would be home before Jae, they decided to walk through the woods that stretched from the temple towards their home and further outwards from the town. Rey stopped at the sight of an opening between the trees close to the temple. Dozens of trees were freshly fallen and there were lightsaber scratches everywhere – on the ground, on the rocks and on the trees. A faint smell of burned wood and grass was lingering in the air.

“Did you come here for the grounding practice today?” Rey asked. “For the preparation, yes”, Ben answered. “It’s a powerful practice, dangerous to do with any stagnant anger in the body. I know all about that. So they need to clean it all out first. If you think this is intense, you should see my own spot close to our house.”

“The one next to what used to be a cliff?” Rey asked. “I do go there sometimes. There’s usually a beautiful form of your energy lingering. And once I’m there, I may cut down a few trees myself.”

“Always my furious scavenger”, Ben wrapped his arm around Rey, kissed her hair and led her onwards on the path. “We wouldn’t do very well living next to a conservation site, would we?”

“A con… What site?” It was still sometimes painful for Rey to face how much less educated she was compared to Ben.

“A conservation site. They put those up on planets with too little forest”, Ben elaborated.

“Like Jakku?”

“No, not like Jakku. I mean planets that do have some forest but where they are losing too much of it to industry and agriculture. They set up sites where nobody is allowed to interfere with the vegetation. The trees can grow huge, so large that our whole class could barely reach their hands around one all together.”

“Have you seen one?”

Ben let go of Rey and took a deep breath before answering: “I’ve blown up many of those sites. Hux was certain that there could be a Resistance base hidden in those woods. There was something horrible about destroying age-old trees, knowing that it would take generations upon generations for them to grow back. At that time, I was already very used to killing lots of people and their screams and the smell of blood and burned flesh didn’t bother me. But the rattling cracks of exploding trunks and the smell of burned wood could haunt me for weeks.”

“Take me and Jae to visit all those places where you have been with the First Order. Let’s take a break after the graduation. We’ve seen so much less of the galaxy than you, and you’ve seen most of it through such different eyes.”

Rey paused before continuing, trying to choose her words carefully: “And we could visit some friends, too. I know at least Poe would love it if we went with your TIE fighter and you would let him fly it a bit. Look, I know you didn’t exactly part in friendship, but you remind me of him in so many ways that I really think you could become friends. And with the others, too… At least they have had plenty of time to forgive you now.”

Ben made an effort to smile. “It wouldn’t exactly be a holiday for me. But you are right, it’s about time I stop running away from everything that happened, and from getting to know your friends.”

Rey grabbed his arm and whispered softly: “I’ll help you.”

They continued in silence up to the spot that Ben had made his own. The former cliff was barely a small rock covered under trunks and pieces of trees. Shattered boulders lay everywhere. It looked like the ground itself had sunk as almost a full layer of it had been burned off by a lightsaber.

Rey inhaled a deep breath of the scent of the forest blended with Ben’s, both so imperfect and perfect at the same time. She grabbed his shirt, the familiar soft, dark grey fabric, and said: “I want you, right here, Kylo.”

And here in the midst of the woods, nothing could keep him from having her, over and over again.


	7. Chapter 7

After Jae graduated from the school she had chosen, she went into a long period of contemplating what to do next with her best friend Lin. They both shared the same feeling of being destined for something great, as long as it was maximally different from the paths of their families.

Lin’s parents were accountants, as Lin’s father’s parents and grandparents had been before him. Their family had been in that business for ages, not caring much about the rises and falls of republics, empires or rebellions. Under any regime, there were always organizations in need for bookkeeping, and that had guaranteed them a steady flow of income, which they had invested wisely enough to build up their own small empire.

Lin had two brothers. The older of them, Lou, was obviously on the way towards inheriting their family business. Already as a child, he had insisted on only dressing up in clean and ironed clothing, and his body moved almost exclusively in straight lines and angles. With the younger brother, To-Jer, still a year older than Lin, they had a contest for who could shock their parents more.

To-Jer already had a band with a few friends. They rarely played anything with a melody, but got still gigs in several underground clubs and had even played on a few other planets and moons nearby. Lin was planning to top this by starting a provocative contemporary art gallery with Jae. They had already been working on pieces for an opening exhibition.

Jae and Lin were a great team. Lin would come up with the most controversial topics possible, building on her frustration at the galactic upper middle class and involvement in the movements criticizing it. She would usually first define topics, messages and outlines, and then Jae would tune into the Force and find a way to make the final work beautiful and shocking in just the right balance.

The need to work on pieces for the gallery – that was the argument that Jae used when asking permission from her parents to spend a long weekend at Lin’s family’s beach house in the Vivinor system. Ben and Rey felt a painful reluctance to let her go so far – further away from home than she had ever been by herself. But they recognized that she was already fourteen years old and keeping her with them forever was not their rightful luxury, so they agreed with nervous hearts.

\- - - - -

Lin’s family came to pick up Jae with their gorgeous ship. Ben and Rey walked with their daughter to the yard, under the shadow of the ship that towered over their house. Lin stepped out of the ship and said in her normal cheerful and casual tone: “Hi Jae! I’m sorry we have to fly in this middle-class junk, but this is all we have that can fit everyone.” She glanced enviously at the TIE fighter and Millennium Falcon parked next to the house.

Then she turned to look at Ben and Rey and her whole face lit up. She did not dare to say anything, as usual, but just smiled at them in awe. They both smiled back and turned to Jae for the last time.

“See you in a few days then”, Rey tried to sound casual. “Have fun, and may the For…”

“Don’t…” Jae interrupted sharply, finishing her sentence just by moving her lips: “…say that in front of my friends.”

Rey nodded and said it to her through the Force instead, though she new that Jae did not really listen to that channel.

“And don’t kiss”, Jae muttered when she saw both her parents starting to lean forward towards her.

“Can we hug?” Ben asked carefully.

Jae did not lift her arms but slightly lowered her lashes and leaned forward as a signal of being open to receiving a hug but not actively participating in it. She was closed into a warm embrace between Ben and Rey, right inside a vortex of a dyad of light and love, which she enjoyed far more than she was open to admit. When they finally let go, Jae grabbed her bag, stepped on board with Lin and the ship took off, glittering in the sunlight.

\- - - - -

The beach house could have easily fit Jae into her own guest room, but both the girls naturally preferred to cram into Lin’s room and sleep in her bed. They decided to get started with the artwork only the next day and use the first one on the beach and, after the sunset, chatting under Lin’s blanket.

“Your parents seem so nice”, Jae said. “I know you don’t appreciate their lifestyle, but they are good people. It’s so nice of them to let me come here. And they are quite funny and cute together, like they really like each other.”

“Yeah, I guess they do. They just sometimes kiss too much at home. That’s disgusting”, Lin giggled.

“At least you can see when they are close and can look away. My parents might be on the opposite sides of a room and then just suddenly kiss. And it looks even more disgusting when their mouths are not together. Otherwise the heads would at least cover something, you know.”

They both were overwhelmed with a wave of laughter. Lin tuned her voice down a bit to continue: “One night last year, I think I heard when they had sex. I’m not completely sure, of course, but that’s how it sounded like.”

“What? Do you mean you don’t actually know when your parents have sex?”

“Well, how would I? Apart from if I happen to hear something… suspicious?”

“I thought everyone feels it. I never hear anything. I think they must be using the Force somehow to cover the sound, but I definitely feel it every time. It’s like the whole house flames up with light that passes through everything.”

“That must be because your parents are Jedi”, Lin concluded and they both fell silent for a while, until she worked her way up to asking what she had been wondering for some time: “Jae, are you still in touch with any of the guys you went to the Jedi school with?”

“Of course, they come to our place every year for a reunion.” Jae started to guess where Lin was heading to.

“Anyone you think that would suit me?” Lin fluttered her lashes and made Jae chuckle before she could respond:

“Trust me, Jedi guys are so boring. They could just meditate all day. I would never date a Jedi.”

“I wouldn’t mind a guy who meditates all day, if that makes him ready to use some Force on me at night.”

They both were about to choke laughing. After catching her breath, Lin asked carefully:

“Can you show me how it feels? To touch through the Force?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t done it really. But I can try.”

Jae lifted her hand above the blanket to be able to move it more easily. She directed it towards Lin’s face, closed her eyes and breathed, trying to relax. She set an intention for her hand to extend out of her physical fingertips. The invisible hand waivered through the air. Jae could not master a full control of its trajectory, but the general direction felt right. Then it hit something.

“Ouch!”

“Oh, sorry, did I hit your nose?” Even without Lin answering, Jae could feel the shape of her nose under her fingers now. She must have approached too quickly. She pulled a bit backward, a bit to the side and then, very gently, landed the Force-mediated extension of her hand on Lin’s cheek. She still kept her eyes closed but heard Lin breath out with relaxed enjoyment.

Jae stroked Lin’s hair and slid her hand down her spine. When hitting the blanket for the first time, her hand got entangled in its fillings. She took a deep breath, relaxed again was able to let the blanket dissolve from her field, leaving only Lin’s skin under her touch. She continued downwards, all the way through the elastic of her panties.

She traced the line under the elastic, over her hip to the front, right at the edge where she could feel her pubic hair starting. Her skin was even warmed here, and slightly sweatier. Jae paused her hand here and took a moment to concentrate. With a quick jump, she let go of Lin’s lower belly and attacked her armpit with a tickle, invisible fingers making rapid small circles just barely touching the soft skin under her arms.

Lin screamed at the top of her lungs, trying to grab the hand and push it out of her armpit like she normally would do when Jae tickled her. Only when she realized that she could not stop a Force-mediated hand like that, she grabbed Jae’s physical hand and directed it towards the ceiling, freeing herself of the tickle.

“Wow, that was something!” Lin marveled after catching her breath. “I want a guy who can do that.”

“I’ll get you into our next reunion”, Jae promised.

She puckered her lips and set an intention to extend them the same way she had just done to her hand, until Lin felt a kiss on her brow. Jae lowered her voice to say: “Oh, Lin, I love you. Now... let’s meditate.”

Then it was Jae’s turn to scream and take cover, as Lin attacked her with a tickle. “You stupid, stop making fun of me!” Lin wrestled herself into a position where she was sitting on Jae’s belly, her legs locking down Jae’s arms at a convenient distance from her sides, leaving her armpits exposed.

“Mercy! Mercy!” Jae screamed. “I’ll do anything you ask!”

“Ok, I’ll release you with one condition”, Lin started, savoring her apparent victory. “I told you exactly what kind of guy I want but you have only told me that you don’t want a Jedi boyfriend. So you have to tell me exactly whom do you want then.”

“I’m not telling you anything”, Jae said with determination, but Lin knew exactly what to do. Knowing her body too well, Lin tortured her with tickles that made her scream wildly until she had to give in: “Ok, ok, fine! I like your brother. That’s it, you heard me, now stop!”

“Really? Which one?” Lin jumped out of Jae’s belly to let her move.

“Well, guess…”

“Lou?”

“Come on, that was not your real guess.”

“Ok, To-Jer then. That would be so cute if you became a couple. So weird, though.”

Hearing Lin say that name aloud made Jae’s stomach flutter.

“Just please don’t tell anyone”, she begged.

“Can I hint him?”

Jae took a moment to consider Lin’s offer. “Ok, you can hint. But you know how to hint discreetly, right?”

“Of course, that’s a deal.”

After a few more giggles, they both fell asleep.


	8. Chapter 8

Next morning, Jae was up before Lin and went to the beach for meditation. Even though she thought that the Jedi went overboard with that practice, she still kept a habit of a short sitting in the mornings, as she noticed it was beneficial for her own work as well. And she made sure to always sit on the ground without hovering or floating. She had of course learned to do that at her first school but never understood the point of it.

Lin would usually join her whenever they were starting a workday together. That had also been their habit for starting the days at school. So Jae did not even open her eyes when she heard Lin sit next to her on the beach a while later. When she did eventually open her eyes, though, she startled noticing that she had not been sitting next to Lin but to To-Jer. And he was certainly not meditating but leaning back against his hands and watching Jae.

Had Lin possibly already hinted something to him? How long had he exactly been watching her? She suddenly could not stop thinking about how she looked, cursing that she had not looked into the mirror before going out. She brushed her hand through the longer side of her dark hair, trying to hastily arrange it, and kept looking back and forth between the sea, the sand and To-Jer.

Finally, Jae decided to overcome the panic and said: “Good morning!” To-Jer just nodded but smiled, encouraging her to continue. “So where were you yesterday? We had dinner with just your parents and Lou.”

“We had a gig in the neighboring town. It took quite late. But it’s nice to see you now. Lin told me earlier that you are coming.”

His last sentence made Jae suspect that maybe Lin had sensed something and hinted him already earlier. But Jae decided not to care. Not while she was next to To-Jer who was so casual, so quick to smile, laugh, tell jokes and make her feel light.

They chatted about half an hour before going indoors for breakfast. Right before entering, To-Jer stopped her to say: “Jae, we’re having another gig tonight, on the Islon moon close by. Would you like to come to listen?”

Jae hesitated, as she knew her parents were expecting her to only stay at this beach house. He noticed her concern and continued: “It’s just about half an hour at lightspeed. I’ll take you there and back of course. Think about it.”

They went indoors and Jae had to make an effort not to burst out of excitement throughout the breakfast. When they were finally alone with Lin, starting to work on their first piece, she told her everything, also that she had decided to go. Lin got equally excited for her, and towards the afternoon, they could concentrate less and less on working.

Finally, they gave up and threw themselves into doing and redoing Jae’s hair and makeup over and over again. When they were satisfied, dinnertime was already close. The dinner was louder than yesterday, as now both Lin and To-Jer were present to bombard their parents with the newest phenomena and ideas in the anticapitalist movement.

Jae marveled at how calmly they related to these blasting souls that seemed to show no mercy to their age-old lifestyle. Apparently, they were happy to still have Lou and each other, while being still able to observe the love that their younger children just had a very unique way of expressing. Jae took every opportunity to smile at them in sympathy and laugh at their jokes, which were, in their own way, as good as their children’s.

When finishing eating, To-Jer looked at Jae over the table with raised eyebrows. Jae smiled and nodded. They sneaked out, grabbing To-Jer’s frenegon case from the hall and hopped on his little shuttle. Just like he had estimated, they were on Islon in half an hour.

It was a rather idyllic moon, with lots of agriculture feeding many less self-sufficient planets in the Vivinor system. The town where they landed had developed a peculiar community. Most of the natives were farmers, and on top of them, the place had attracted young people from all over the galaxy to distance themselves from a stressful lifestyle or career, some for a gap year, some for longer. They would help out with farm tasks to earn their sustenance and spend the nights partying.

To-Jer took Jae through an alley full of bars and clubs. When they found the correct one, he casually took her hand to pull her to the back door. His touch felt natural and relaxed, and still made Jae’s stomach swirl, sending shivers to the rest of her body.

But eventually, Jae got even more fascinated about the music. It had no trace of melody, but it certainly did not need one. It was other-worldly. To-Jer and his friends had found truly unique sounds and an enchanting way to combine them.

First Jae could just listen with her eyes closed. Little by little she started to observe them more, each with their own selection of tattoos and piercings and unique instruments, some of them home-made for tailored sounds. Towards the end, her eyes kept gliding only towards To-Jer and the gentle movements his arms made to strum his frenegon while he sang – or not exactly sang but rather made different kinds of surreal sounds through his perfectly shaped mouth.

When they met again backstage after the gig, Jae was out of words. “It was… I don’t know how to say. I’ve never heard anything like that. Wonderful.”

“Thank you, I’m glad you liked it.” To-Jer placed a hand on her shoulder. “Come on, let me show you something before we leave.”

He took her to another smaller room next to the larger one where the rest of the band members were opening their bottles. He turned the lights on so that she could see what was hung on the back wall. It looked like very similar to To-Jer’s frenegon, just a lot older, probably from imperial days.

“Dremlan Furon’s first frenegon!” To-Jer introduced. “He used to play here before he became famous, and later he donated this here. They don’t dare to keep it out under the reach of the drunk public.”

“Makes sense”, Jae examined the frenegon. “So this was really his? There will be space for yours on this wall, too.” She turned back to face him, awe filling her eyes.

Wondering at her own courage, she lifted her hands around his neck and kissed him. He smelled and tasted like sweet stage smog. Jae rested her forehead against his and giggled softly. To-Jer slid his hand through the shorter side of her hair. When he reached her neck, he pulled her head closer to another kiss. His hands caressed her neck perfectly, moved down her spine and around her hips, starting to make their way under her shirt.

As he gently but firmly pulled off her shirt, a memory crept up in her head. Though it was among the last things she would have wanted to be thinking about right now, she could not help seeing herself in their living room about eight years ago. She had already quit her parents’ school but they had wanted to teach her one more lesson. They had wanted her to learn to sense people’s intentions, and Jae had to admit that it had been of some benefit for her several times.

She had practiced the sensing with her parents. They had first made it very easy, opening their hearts completely, letting her sense the love and care they carried for her every moment. Then they gradually shut themselves so that she had to really reach out to sense anything.

They had also made her tasks by setting different intentions on purpose, like wanting her money, wanting to be seen, wanting to take advantage of her, wanting connection, wanting sex (very uncomfortable intention to practice with her own parents), or their combinations, and she learned to sense them all.

Now it seemed that this memory was not about to go away without her doing something about it. She said in a calm voice inside her mind: “Alright, I’ll do it. Then get out of my head.”

She tuned back to To-Jer, whose delicious eyes and hands seemed to devour her with similar hunger as she felt herself. She forced herself to pause, hold To-Jer’s shoulder for a moment, look deep into his eyes, breath, and reach for his heart.

She was shocked at what she saw.

“You… Really? So this is all you want?”

“What do you mean, Jae? I… I really love you.”

His words sounded like a patch only partly glued on a pile of junk, flapping in the wind. Underneath lay everything else in an open stack like he didn’t even try to cover anything: the hunger for her body and the excitement about everyone to whom he could tell that the girl he got this time was not just anybody but the daughter of the famous Jedi Masters. Essentially, there was nothing about her, just a whole heart full of himself.

Jae had not even imagined this possibility, as she was so used to seeing herself in others’ hearts wherever she looked: in her parents, in Lin, in so many of their other friends. The biggest heart she had ever looked into was Chewie’s. It was like a deep lake, filled with the wish for her happiness every time they met.

She saw some of that even in the old lady who sold fuel for her speeder at the gas station halfway towards the town from their home. After she had filled up her tank and paid, she would see the intention for her own wellbeing pass through the old lady’s heart before they said goodbye and she went on to serve other customers.

Being so surrounded by this kind of intentions had made Jae very generous with her own, usually radiating a strong will for others’ happiness around her. But now she only got confused.

“But I don’t understand. How come there’s nothing in your heart about me, just yourself?”

“Come on, don’t be stupid, how could you possibly know what’s in my heart?”

Jae kept her eyes locked at his until he couldn’t escape the fact that she really knew, which made him outraged.

“You freak Jedi slut! What else would I think of you because that’s what you are?”

Jae could sense him still, under his fury, stitching up plans for still making up an impressive story about this night, just by using a bit of exaggeration about how far they had gone. She took a deep breath and said:

“Yes, that’s what I am. And do you know what freak Jedi sluts do guys who brag about sleeping with them, especially when it has not really happened?”

To-Jer opened his mouth but was out of words and in a satisfying way scared, so Jae explained: “I will hear it, wherever in the galaxy you say it, and I will snap my fingers in the Force, and you’ll never be able to get hard again.”

A visible shiver of terror passed through To-Jer’s body. He still gathered himself to say: “There’s no way you could do that.”

Jae waived her hand across the air in front of him and said: “I most certainly can.”

She had to wait for the effect for a few seconds, holding her breath, until he repeated: “You most certainly can.”

Jae was relieved and satisfied. Mind-tricking had not been a strong subject for her in the Jedi school. She had always found it somehow unethical and thus had low motivation to learn it. But now she had so much wanted to make this boy’s ego suffer that it had not been even difficult. And he had not put up a lot of resistance either.

Jae had possibly gone too far, though, forgetting that To-Jer was her only way out of this moon. Furiously he turned around, ran out of the door and slammed it behind him. It took a moment for Jae to find her shirt on the floor and put it on again. When she ran out and to the direction they had come from, she saw To-Jer’s shuttle take off right when she reached it. Jae was left alone on a strange moon in the darkening night.


	9. Chapter 9

Jae sank to the ground right there, on the edge of a ditch, and cried. As her last resort, she tried what she had practiced yesterday in Lin’s bed, though then with a lot shorter distance. Now she reached out with her mind, as far as she could, and let herself whisper faintly: “Mom, Dad, are you there?”, trying with all her power to tune into them through the Force.

\- - - - -

At home, Rey was laying in bed with a blissful smile after making love with Ben Solo. She was still stroking his hair and kissing him every few seconds. Suddenly, Ben looked away and asked: “What’s that?”

“What?” Rey looked first around the room.

“In the Force. I haven’t seen that kind of signature before.”

Rey closed her eyes and took a few breaths to connect better. “It’s Jae”, she realized. “She’s reaching out to us. She did this only once before, as a baby. Oh, our little girl, what her signature has become! It’s… It’s…”

“…in color”, Ben completed her sentence. “No Jedi has a Force signature in color. She’s enriching that side, too.”

“But why is she calling us?”

Rey’s question clenched them both with an overwhelming worry. They threw their still naked and sweaty bodies into an embrace and relaxed into each other’s arms, opening themselves to the Force and lighting their dyad up like a beacon for their daughter to easily find.

\- - - - -

Next to a ditch on Islon, Jae’s mind meandered but saw now a clear direction where to head for. She had never seen it from this side, but could recognize the same dyad that had always been there for her. And she reached with her mind straight to the vortex in the middle of it.

“I’m on Islon. It’s a moon in the Vivinor system. I’m sorry. Please bring me home”, she said behind her tears.

\- - - - -

Ben and Rey heard her, as clearly as if they would be talking to each other through their bond. Within minutes, they were dressed up and out of the door. Ben ran through the yard, past the Millennium Falcon towards the TIE fighter next to it, followed by a hesitant Rey.

“Shouldn’t we take the Falcon? I don’t think Jae wants to cram with me to the back seat of the TIE anymore.”

Ben disagreed. “She might be in real trouble. Falcon doesn’t look… offensive enough.”

Rey got the point only partly but did not want to waste time on an argument and climbed to the back seat of the TIE. They rarely used this ship. The Falcon was better for errands, as it had more space and looked more normal. This one had been used last time by Poe when he visited them the previous year.

Rey had herself flown this ship only once, that day already sixteen years ago, when she brought Ben back from Exegol in it. That whole flight had been a whirpool of emotions: the fear that Ben would be too injured and too low on life force to make it; the grief over everyone she had seen die in the attack on the Last Order; the bliss of knowing that Ben was finally with her, as himself, if she just could get his broken ribs and leg treated in time.

Still, she did not particularly enjoy the idea of flying this TIE, as just sitting in the front seat had a tendency to bring up an echo of the same emotional chaos again. But the back seat held a lot sweeter memories from the vacation they had taken around the galaxy when Jae was nine years old. There was so little room that they had cuddled all the time and played every possible travel game. Only for over-night distances, they had embarked on a larger ship with a parking space for the TIE and a hotel for themselves.

Islon was just a few hours away at light speed, but those hours passed painfully slowly, filled with the fear that they would be too late. Once on autopilot, Rey climbed to the front seed, curled up in Ben’s lap and rested her forehead against his chin. As Ben wrapped his arms around her, she had nothing to fear. They only concentrated on circulating love through their dyad, hoping to make it easy for Jae to sense its approach.

\- - - - -

Jae certainly could sense something approaching, but the distances and speeds in the Force were impossible for her to comprehend. She lay on the ground, feeling blessed with the hopeful sense of her family getting closer, somewhere.

She must have fallen asleep, because she startled awake when somebody grabbed her shoulder. She did not see any face, as the creature was hooded, but a modulated voice came from under the hood, as he looked back over his shoulder: “I think we found a good one.”

Looking around, Jae saw that she was surrounded by a group of hooded and masked creatures. The first one dragged her on her feet and started to pull her towards a cargo ship that she saw on the field behind them.

She could perceive the light from her parents’ Force signature increasing, even hear them repeating softly: “We are on our way, we are soon there, we are with you.”

Time. She just needed some way to play time.

“Where do you think you're taking me?” she asked and got no answer. She kicked in the belly of the person who was dragging her. That made her free but only for a second before two others had grasped her arms.

“She’s strong”, one modulated voice said. “Perfect for the mines. They will pay well for her.”

Jae could not break free from the two of them. She just tried to make their walk to the ship as slow as possible. They had to drag her over the field, the half-grown crops scratching her lower legs.

They had reached the cargo ship and opened the door when their gazes were turned by the sight of a TIE fighter landing next to them on the field. For Jae, this ship had always been an ordinary sight in their yard. To her surprise, she could almost hear the jaws of her captors dropping under their masks, as they gaped at this relic of the Empire and the First Order. For a moment, they lost their interest in pushing her into their ship and only stared, still keeping their grip on her.

Ben and Rey jumped out of the TIE and ran towards the cargo ship with lightsabers in their hands. The group quickly realized that they were not in a museum but in trouble, and resumed to their task of pushing Jae into the ship.

But Ben blew them back one by one with his free hand as he ran. He let them fall scattered among the crops, apart from the last one, whom he drew through the air straight to himself. He locked him in his grip, holding a lightsaber under his masked face, leaving his neck right in the corner between the blade and the crossguard, blue light glistening on his throat.

Rey ran straight to Jae, grabbing her under her arm. Some of her captors were recovering from the blow and starting to make their way back towards her, but they stopped at the sight of Rey’s lightsaber pointed at them.

“Where were you taking her?” Ben asked.

No answer.

“Tell me! Where?” he yelled in the ear next to him.

As the creature still refused to speak, he furiously put down his lightsaber and opened the freed hand against the mask-covered brow, almost touching it. He searched inside the mind. All sorts of daily distractions, childhood memories and other junk he was not interested in. Then he could see the shape of his target: what had been going on in this mind right before they arrived. Their destination…

The creature let out a horrendous cry. Despite the modulator, it was obvious that the pain was excruciating.

“Dad, stop! You’re hurting him”, Jae screamed.

Ben did not seem to hear her. He was totally immersed in taking what he wanted out of the mind of this wretched being.

Rey knew what she had to say. She would have preferred her daughter not to hear it, but she took the risk of shouting it aloud to make sure he would hear:

“Kylo, that’s enough!”

He heard it, let go of the mind that he was searching and reached for Rey’s instead.

“Rey, help me, please”, he said silently through the bond. “I hate them so much right now that I will torture and kill them all. Please don’t let me do it in front of Jae.”

Rey nodded at him. As she noticed that his hand was moving towards grabbing his lightsaber again, she quickly lifted her hand to call it to herself.

Kylo could not stop himself from resisting. He held out his hand, halting the flight of the lightsaber hilt in mid-air and starting to hinge it back towards himself.

Rey realized that she could not twist it from him by force. It would only break, just like everything else that they touched in this way. With her hand, she only pulled enough to keep the hilt steady in the air and focused her mind on talking to him softly through the bond:

“I’ve got you, sweetheart. Let go! I’ll protect you and Jae. You’re safe, and I love you. Let me help you. Just let me have it. Just for a while.”

And inch by inch, Kylo gave in and let the lightsaber float to Rey’s hand. He was out of breath, still holding his captive who had been too confused and scared to fight himself free. Now that he sensed an opportunity to escape, he made a move which reminded Kylo about his presence and made him tighten his grip. His free hand started to move upwards towards the level of his throat.

Rey forced Kylo’s hand down with a signal from her own. Then she did the same to the other one, forcing him to release his grip and just stand helplessly with both hands down. Then she sent her invitation through their bond:

“Ben, come back.”

With her help, he pulled Ben Solo back into his body. When Rey felt that he was in control again, she released his arms. Keeping them relaxed by his sides, Ben said more steadily:

“Just tell us the truth and we wont hurt you.”

And finally they heard an answer through the modulator:

“We deliver slaves to the mines on Hays.”

Rey and Jae peeked for the first time into the cargo ship. In the yellow light of Rey’s saber, they saw it was full of boys and girls, the oldest around Jae’s age, many of them a lot younger, all shackled to the cargo racks.

“Can anyone of you fly?” Rey asked.  
One of the older girls shyly raised her palm.

“And does everyone remember their home coordinates?”  
Rey was relieved as everyone nodded.  
She passed Ben’s lightsaber to Jae and they cut open all the shackles.

“Now you fly everybody home”, she told the only girl who could fly.

“But, but… I’ve only flown my own small shuttle, never a big ship like this…” the girl protested. She looked anxiously back and forth between Rey, Jae and her companions, until Jae locked her eyes with her own and smiled at her. Calmly, she waived her hand across the air in front of the girl and said:

“You know exactly how to fly this ship.”

And confidently, she repeated: “I know exactly how to fly this ship.”

Rey was about to explode with pride as they watched the cargo ship take off safely. While she organized a transportation for the slave smugglers to the closest jail, Jae used the time to sent a holovid to Lin, guessing that she would be worried when waking up without seeing her. She explained that she was going home but all was ok; she had just discovered that things would not work out with To-Jer, but was sending love to Lin and looking forward to continuing their work on the exhibition once she would be back in town.

The morning was already approaching when they boarded the TIE and jumped to hyperspace towards home. For the first time in years, Jae snuggled her head against Rey’s shoulder, and they all slept most of the way home.


	10. Chapter 10

The following weeks Jae was busy with finishing the exhibition with Lin. During the opening week, she even stayed a few nights at Lin’s family’s mansion closer to the town so that they could work later and start earlier. The day before the opening, they finished everything in the afternoon and Jae decided to go home for the final night so that they could come to the opening together with her family.

When parking her speeder at the yard at home, she noticed that the boarding ramp of the Millennium Falcon was out. The familiar clicking and clanging sounds told her that her mother was inside in the endless business of fixing the ship. They exchanged quick hellos through the entrance and Jae continued indoors where she found her father, sitting in meditation in mid-air in their living room.

“Hello”, she said, poured herself a glass of jidda and sat on the sofa. Ben landed softly next to her. “Hello, sweetheart. Everything ready for tomorrow?”

“I think so”, Jae replied and they both fell silent apart from the gentle gulps that she kept swallowing of her jidda. She looked like she was working her way up to asking something.

“Dad, the night when you and Mom picked me up from Islon and you were…” She had no idea how that was supposed to be called. “…somehow in the mind of that smuggler… Do you remember?”

Ben nodded, starting to guess where she might be heading to.

“What did Mom call you?”

“Oh, so you heard that? Well, it’s a long story.”

“Obviously”, Jae tried to help.

“A long story that you have a right to hear, but I don’t know where to start.”

“Well, start from the beginning then.” Jae looked at him with no intention to let him escape, but also no intention to judge him, regardless of what she was about to hear.

And Ben did as she asked and told her everything, from the first encounters with Snoke to his rise to the supreme leadership of the First Order and how eventually Rey brought him back with the help of his family. Large part of the time they were both in tears, sometimes silent for long pauses so that he had time to look for words. Little by little, he made his way into telling her everything. Many of the details made Jae’s blood chill, but she stayed committed to the way she looked at him, completely void of judgement.

When Ben had finished, he could only squeeze Jae against his heart, overwhelmed by the marvel over this being who had blessed his life so completely, even though he had done everything possible not to earn anything close to this kind of joy. When he was ready let Jae go, she poured herself another glass of jidda and offered one to Ben as well.

“So, tell me about grandfather”, she said as she leaned back on the sofa next to him again. “He never visits us with Grandma.”

“No, he can’t. He was no Jedi, you know.”

“Then what was he?”

“Well, he used to smuggle”, Ben started. As that made Jae’s eyes narrow, he quickly continued:

“But never slaves. Actually, I remember one night when he came home, clothes and face covered in blood. He refused to say anything, but another day I overheard when Chewie told my Mom what had happened. They had taken up a slave smuggling job, but once they saw the kids that they were supposed to take to a factory on the Outer Rim, they couldn’t do it. They packed everybody under the floor panels of the Falcon and took off to the correct direction but tried to turn back in secret to return the kids to their families. Of course it didn’t stay secret. They were attacked and barely escaped alive. But each one of the kids they managed to return home. Snoke explained that to me later as a sign of weakness from him, and I used to believe him for a long time, until I realized how incredibly strong choice it was from him.”

They were silent for a moment and Ben tried to move on to another heroic memory of Han Solo. Nothing came to his mind, so he told a few funny ones, then a couple of sad ones, and some just neutral, memories from their everyday life when Ben was still living at home.

That was where Rey found them when returning indoors after a victorious moment with fixing the hyperdrive: drinking jidda and remembering everything possible about Han Solo. She joined in with a glass and a few memories of her own that she cherished from the brief time she had known him.

Soon they decided it was time to sleep in order to be ready for tomorrow’s opening. But Jae did not fall asleep until a couple of hours later. Her mind was busy with planning the next exhibition, which she knew she would have to do solo, without Lin.


	11. Chapter 11

For the following year, Jae immersed herself into her next project. They built together a shed for her next to their house so that she could work uninterrupted. There she spent hours in generational meditation and did tons of research about the First Order.

When Finn and Poe came to visit her and Lin’s gallery, she made them stay for several days so that she could interview Finn in detail about the upbringing of stormtroopers. Based on these conversations, she painted a whole wall-sized fresco in tribute to the families who had lost babies to the First Order.

She also illustrated a lot of memories shared by Ben, as well as visions and impressions that came to her in meditation or just when she opened herself up to the Force with an intention to see something interesting about her roots.

When Jae reckoned that she was almost ready, she selected a day when Rey was in town for errands to invite Ben to her shed to have a look. He was amazed at the work she had done. So many details were exactly as he remembered them, some even more vivid and terrifying than in his own memory. Besides his own stories, Jae had painted glimpses of her grandfather’s life before Ben was even born – either from her imagination, or then she had eventually found some way to get in touch with him, which Ben would not be surprised about.

The bunch of paintings intended for the final hall of the gallery represented Jae’s own life and how she had found her path. With the purpose of lightening up the mood after the heavy war imagery, she had included glimpses to the everyday life of being raised by a dyad in the Force – being cradled to sleep through Force vibrations; hugs and kisses landing on her through the air; dinners with grandmother’s ghost; and the ridiculous fights that her parents put on just to see which of them was more powerful, even though they were forever doomed to equality.

“There’s one piece missing”, Jae started to get to her point after Ben had looked through and praised everything. “I have painted many of your memories but not you.”

“What are these then?” Ben pointed at a row of sketches of himself, some together with Rey and some with Jae. Couple of them seemed to his eye as already finalized.

“That’s you now. But I haven’t painted Kylo Ren, because I haven’t seen him. Or I have seen him briefly and vaguely, like then on Islon, and at home I notice you sometimes have his energy when you’re alone with Mom. But whenever you’re him so that she’s around, it just makes her shine brighter, and that blinds me, you see. You have to show him to me now that she’s away.”

Ben shook his head. “There’s no way I would do that. You saw me with that smuggler. You heard him and all that pain. And I had not even got started. With your Mom it’s different. She knows Kylo Ren and she can defend herself and bring me back if something goes wrong. But alone with you… I could never take the risk of doing something to you.”

“I was afraid you might say that… Listen, you don’t have to be in the same room with me. Just go indoors, sit on the sofa as Kylo Ren and let me tune into you from here. I can take our lightsabers here and lock the door. Consider it as a practice. You’ve taught me so many and now I can teach you one.”

“But why, Jae? Your work seems perfect to me, just like this. Why do you absolutely need to add a painting of somebody who was a failure to begin with?”

“Because the galaxy needs to understand who was behind this.” Jae looked towards the wall where her gloomiest and most violent works were stacked.

Her words did not make it any easier. Opening up his darkest to her so that she could channel it to the whole galaxy sounded far from appealing. But he understood the point and set out to make preparations.

Besides their lightsabers, Ben insisted that Jae took with her in the shed all other possible weapons, including kitchen knives, wrenches and Rey’s blaster, which she still kept as a memory of Han Solo though had not used it in years.

Before leaving her to lock the door from inside, he looked into her dark brown eyes and stroke the longer side of her hair, feeling like it would be the last time and said:

“Promise me you won’t let me hurt you, Jae. Kill me if you must, just don’t let me hurt you, please.”

“Ok, I promise. But trust me, there will be no need to kill you. You’ll just sit on the sofa and if any emotions or impulses arise, you just let them flow through you without acting on them. Don’t try to tell me that Kylo Ren wouldn’t know how to meditate.”

Ben only partly agreed and could not stop worrying. He knew that if things would go bad, a simple lock would not hold Kylo Ren back for long. And he certainly would have no problem making a weapon out of anything. He wouldn’t even need anything but his own hands.

But he still hoped that all the precautions would at least slow him down enough to give time for Rey to come back. And Jae was strong with the Force. Maybe she would be able to resist him, just like Rey had been even before any training.

Clinging to that hope as a beacon, Ben closed the front door, locked it as an extra measure to slow himself down and sat on the sofa. He relaxed, let Ben Solo fade away from his body and Kylo Ren take his place.

Right away he felt unpleasant and heavy. The darkness felt painful to bear now that Rey was not around to meet it and swirl it together with light. He could easily understand now how the Force bond with Rey had been such a lifeline for him during the First Order days.

Even now, Rey was not far away. He would just need to extend his mind a bit and she would be with him again to soothe the pain, wherever she was. Nowadays they could easily open and close the bond by their own choice.

But he forced himself to keep it closed, as he had promised Jae to stay alone and let her in. The part of letting her in felt even heavier. He felt so completely ashamed of who he was now, that Jae was the last person he would want to face.

He could see Jae’s Force signature already, a blurry shape looming in front of him, waiting patiently to see better. He nodded, took a deep breath and opened his whole black, conflicted heart.

He was face to face with Jae now. Her keen eyes were taking him in, relaxed and soft. Once in a while her eyes looked down, and he guessed she was painting. Her gaze was not her normal one, not the blend of love and rebellion that Jae would look at Ben Solo with. It was a pure professional artist’s gaze, taking in every piece of his soul as they are, with full objectivity and acceptance. There was something incredibly healing about being watched like that.

Kylo did not know how long they had sat there. At some point, he just noticed the absence of shame. It had melted somewhere in Jae’s work, or just in the connection. Finally, Jae nodded with her eyes and backed away. Understanding that she was ready, he said goodbye to Kylo Ren, with a lot more peace than ever before, and let Ben Solo back into his body.

At that moment, Jae heard a loud knock on the shed door. “Jae, I got the brushes you asked for!” Rey shouted from outside. “Why have you locked the door?”

As Jae opened the door, Rey's eyes were straight caught by the pile of knives and wrenches on the floor, topped with her blaster and Ben and Jae’s lightsabers.

“What’s all this about?” Rey asked when Ben walked through the yard up to the shed door. He felt too embarrassed to tell, but as it was on the top of his mind in any case, it was not difficult for Rey to see through their bond what had happened.

“So you made your daughter lock herself up in a shed with every possible weapon in the house to defend herself from Kylo Ren?”

Suddenly, Rey could not stop laughing. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help picturing Kylo Ren showing up in a distant village with his entourage of stormtroopers. And then all the teenagers in the village rise up, armed with kitchen knives and wrenches and defeat him. His mask cracks under the blows from the wrenches in the skinny hands, and the stormtroopers fall one by one with peeling knives in their throats. Wait! You told me you broke your mask yourself. Maybe it was just a lie to cover what really happened…”

“It was the truth!” Ben attacked Rey’s armpit with a tickle. But Rey resisted, gluing her arms into her sides and continuing to speak through her laughter: “It was a lie, I can see it. I can hear the girls screaming: I kill you, Kylo Ren! This is our revenge!”

“Help me, Jae!” Ben asked. “She’s making fun of you, too.”

And they did what they had done countless of times when Jae was little but not in many years. Ben threw Rey softly on the floor and held her steady, hands up so that Jae could tickle both her armpits. But this time she did not settle for the armpits. She let another pair of hands grow out of her shoulders, extending right through Rey’s tunic to the flesh of her sides.

That made Rey scream at the top of her lungs. “Stop! Where have you learned to do that? That’s torture! I surrender! I surrender! I cancel the joke.” And she made a loud swallow to signify that the cancellation was complete.

Ben broke into a smile, bowed his head down to Rey’s face and brushed his nose a few of times against hers.

“If only Kylo Ren would have known that you tickle so easily”, he said and kissed her.

“Enough...” Jae protested and Ben released his grip on Rey. As they both sat up on the floor, their eyes were drawn by the painting that Jae had just finished.

Apparently, Jae had not seen an actual figure of Kylo Ren, as she had painted none. Instead, she had filled the canvas with black swirls. Over them, diagonally and down across the picture ran a scar in white. Its shape and trajectory were so exact that Ben found himself unconsciously tracing his finger down the right side of his face and neck.

“Oh, so that’s were you had it”, Jae said with delight, like after solving a puzzle that had been bothering her. “How did you get it?

“Your Mom’s first lightsaber fight.”

“You would have done the same”, Rey smiled at Jae and the pile of “weapons” on the floor. Turning her gaze back to the painting, she went serious again. It reminded her vividly about the countless of times she had faced that same soul and about the pain of seeing him so lost. Aloud she said:

“Excellent work, Jae. That’s him. You got it exactly.”

\- - - - -

Once Jae got her exhibition opened, people started arriving from all around the galaxy. There were people who had lost children to the First Order, parents to the Resistance, and brothers, sisters and friends to all the fighting that had continued for so long and everywhere. There were some who had known Jae’s grandparents personally, which she was particularly excited about. And of course there were Jae’s and her family’s own friends.

Finn was particularly mesmerized by the fresco about the stormtroopers. After seeing through the whole gallery, he still went back to the fresco room to marvel at how well Jae had captured all the emotions around the training, missions and everyday life at the base and on the ships – the emotions they were officially not allowed to have but that were there in any case.

After taking a final look and turning to leave, Finn noticed an old couple, looking at the fresco and shedding silent tears. Both had mostly grey hair, with only few strands of black here and there. Their backs were stooped and dark skin wrinkled. But on the man’s face, Finn could see the shape of the nose and chin of his own. And when the woman turned to face him, he had a feeling of looking into his own eyes in the mirror.

He opened his mouth and wanted to say something, but had no time to find any words before Poe walked in next to him and wrapped his arm around his shoulder.

“I was looking for you. Let’s go! We’ll all have dinner at Rey and Ben’s house. I’ll take you with the TIE again.” He finished his last sentence with a kiss on Finn’s cheek.

“Sure”, Finn agreed, slid his arm around Poe’s waist and followed him out. As he glanced back at the old couple, he saw that they were also looking after him, now smiling.


	12. Chapter 12

When Jae was finally ready to take down her solo exhibition, Lin returned from Hays Minor in the Otomok system with material for a new one. She had gone to that mining planet soon after they had opened their gallery, primarily with the purpose of dating Temiri Blagg – a graduate from Ben and Rey’s school whom Lin had met at a class reunion where Jae had sneaked her in.

Temiri was on Hays Minor for an assignment of supervising that Haysian Mining Corporation obeyed the slavery ban. The corporation had been originally set up by the First Order. As its products were still needed in the new regime, it had continued its operations, just under a new set of regulations.

After Jae had almost been sold there as a slave together with a bunch of other kids, Ben and Rey had asked Temiri to go to the planet to put an end to that trade. He was one of their most powerful graduates, and the implementation of the slavery ban obviously needed stronger supervision than what was provided by the other authorities.

Temiri did a meticulous job. He sensed every ship that approached the Otomok system with human cargo intended for slavery, and was ready to meet them at whatever secret spot they chose to land on. Then he would organize the smugglers to get arrested and the intended slaves to be sent back home – unless they were adults who really wanted to work, in which case he would organize them to be offered a job in the corporation with a salary and work contract.

Whenever not sensing new ships approaching, Temiri gave his undivided attention to Lin. However, Lin kept getting busier and busier as she discovered another opportunity for her on the wretched planet. Se befriended many mine workers and found out that even though they were not officially slaves anymore, their working conditions were not far from slavery.

The wages were almost negligible. They were exposed to toxic fumes and chemicals daily without protection. They had no say about their working hours and could be called to work spontaneously, even at night or weekend, which prevented them from ever leaving the planet. They could be fired any time with a day’s notice and had no rights to unionize.

Lin started to work on a holovid exhibition to expose all of it. She used her connections with the workers to get sneaked into the mines with her holorecorder and documented everything that was going on. Also, she recorded a lot of footage about their daily lives at home, under the constant insecurity and sickness.

She took closeups of the pus coming from their noses and cysts that they bore under their skins from constant exposure to the smelting fumes. And she recorded the dead fetuses that bled out of the wombs of the women who worked their bare hands elbow-deep in the cocktails of flotation chemicals. Those babies who managed to stay inside their mothers long enough to be born alive, typically had disorders in the development of their brain and limbs.

\- - - - -

Jae felt revolted already when setting up the exhibition with Lin. She was slightly wondering if people would come to voluntarily look at this imagery. Lin’s solo exhibition had none of the beautiful softening that Jae would typically add to their shared work.

But Jae’s previous work had elevated the reputation of their gallery, and lots of curious people came already to the opening. Among the visitors during the opening day, the most devastated one turned out to be Rey. She paced from room to room, her heart picking up speed and hands clenching into tighter and tighter fists after every holovid.

Rey had never talked much with Lin, apart from some cheerful and polite words when she came to visit Jae or when they met at the gallery. Now she walked straight up to Lin and asked:

“Is it true this is really happening, right now?”

“Yes, Master Skywalker. Everything’s from my recording.”

“Give me the coordinates. And just call me Rey.”

Lin got thrilled. This was not what she had dared to expect. Already after the opening night, the most powerful person she knew was shocked enough to take action.

“I can take you there, Rey”, Lin proposed.

Rey scanned the girl in front of her. Lin was barely seventeen but taller than Rey. Her fiery passion for justice reminded Rey about herself at the same age. But the air of joy, innocence and carelessness of somebody who was used to always having enough – that would have been completely foreign to Rey at that time.

She almost pierced the girl with her eyes, pondering if it was irresponsible or wise to take her offer, considering what she might have to do on Hays. In the end she said: “Ok.”

Once she had made her decision, she moved quickly, out of the gallery, onto a speeder with Lin behind her, and at home straight into the Millennium Falcon. Glancing at the empty co-pilot seat next to her, she asked:

“Can you fly, Lin?”

“No.”

Rey squeezed her eyes closed. This would become a problem. Did the rich kids always have their parents or some private pilots to fly them around?

“Were you just running off without a co-pilot?”

Rey opened her eyes into a relaxed smile when she heard Ben’s voice.

“Thank you, sweetheart”, she said.

Ben was already leaning in for a kiss he thought he had just earned, but Rey turned to Lin:

“Now, the coordinates!”

Lin typed them in as Rey and Ben prepared to take off. Once on autopilot, Ben put his hand on Rey’s shoulder, hoping to start calming her down.

“Rey, are you sure about what you’re doing?”

Se did not answer, just stared straight ahead with determination through the sweeping stars. With a frustrated tension creeping into his voice, Ben continued:

“Do you know anything about formulating work contracts and setting up a labor union? There’s not much that a Jedi can do about this. We need lawyers.”

“And what do you know about that?” Rey’s voice was filling up with rage.

“My Mom used to have an army of staff under her for doing exactly this kind of work. She never explained to me in detail but I fully got the picture that it’s very complex. If they would suspect a violation at one factory, they could use a month to prepare for an intervention.”

“Are you suggesting we let these people suffer for one more month?”

“Yes, I am. So that we can solve this for good and not just make an intervention that the Haysian lawyers will laugh at.”

Rey stopped responding. Ben saw that she had made up her mind and the only thing he could influence was damage control. He closed his eyes, trying to reach for his mother to ask for help. But the Force felt quiet apart from Rey’s determination, which was like a loud drum beating on the other side of their bond, overpowering everything else from his awareness.

Suddenly they remembered they had a guest. They had never really spent time with Lin, as the girls spent most of their time in Jae’s room when she would visit. And now that she was alone with them for once, they had just started off with an argument among themselves, totally ignoring her.

They did not even know what they would say to her. She seemed to be from such a different world. But they had to try something to at least be decent hosts, so they made it out of the cockpit to find her.

They discovered that Lin had no problem being entertained, as she was already playing dejarik – with Jae who had apparently sneaked on board after Ben.

Still angry, Rey burst out: “Jae, what are you doing here? Do you have any idea about what we’re going to do?”

“No, but you would have done the same.”

No matter how outraged Rey was, she could not argue with that. And she was thankful that Jae was taking care of Lin, much better than she managed to do with Ben.

“Don’t stay up too late”, Rey said and threw herself face down on the bunk.

Ben still stayed up for a while, giving Lin hints so that she could win at least one game. He knew Jae’s tactic and that she was impossible to beat without practice. After he went to sleep, Lin quickly lost her chances of winning again. After one more win for Jae, they turned off the game and cuddled up to sleep.

\- - - - -

They spent a couple more days on the freighter before dropping out of lightspeed by Hays Minor. Lin guided them to land straight in front of the headquarters of Haysian Mining Corporation. At the gate, they were stopped and asked for authorization.

“We are here to speak with the…” Rey started confidently but reverted quickly to looking at Lin on her side for support.

“With the managing director”, Lin completed. “We are here for an inspection.”

For months, she had been burning to use those words. Inspectors got officially the chance to see confidential documents. But alone she would have never dared to fake it. False inspectors were usually spotted at the gate, and the law was not on their side.

The guard looked at them intently. They all stared back, Rey, Ben and Jae all pushing through the Force so that he would believe them without asking for identification. Finally he nodded, opened the gate and told about their arrival to somebody through an intercom.

As soon as they reached indoors, a man in an odd, brown, glimmering dress was welcoming them by the entrance. He took them through a multitude of corridors and elevators to a meeting room on the top floor. Four seats were left free for them on the side of a long conference table. The other seats were full of people with similarly glimmering clothing in different colors.

The lady who was introduced as the managing director sat right across them, wearing such a long cape that it reached way back on the floor behind and on the sides of her chair. The embroidered edge looked like it had taken two people to position it into this perfect arrangement.

“We know that you are keeping your workers in conditions that resemble slavery. This has to end now.” Rey went straight to the point, not wanting to spend any extra minute in this room.

The managing director smiled. “I am afraid I am not entirely clear about what you are referring to. Here, I can present copies of the work contracts of all the employees for your review. As you can see, each of them complies with the law exactly.”

She nodded at her both sides and several excited hands started to pass datapads in front of Rey. Rey, Ben, Jae and Lin took a pile of pads each to examine.

Rey stared at the letters. She recognized them and some of the words they formed, just as Ben had taught her. But she could not understand anything about the combinations of the words. Most of the sentences were long, consisting of complicated words that made no sense together. On her side, Ben and the girls were already going through their second pads.

Rey stood up, smashed her pad on the table and yelled: “Enough!”

Ben looked at her hand as she lifted it to reach for her lightsaber. But something made her stop her hand in mid-air. Ben felt a prickling sensation in his fingertips, which he guessed to be an echo of what Rey was feeling.

“Take cover with the girls”, Rey told him through the Force bond.

Ben nodded. He pulled Jae and Lin with him down to the floor, right when Rey let a stream of blue lightnings flow out from her fingers.

She took care not to aim at any person. But she let her rage out on the conference table, on all the datapads on it with the hostile text that she could not read, on the embroidered edge of the cape of the managing director, and finally on the ceiling. The ceiling blew up and they were left under the stars, blue lightnings striking from the top floor of the headquarters up to the sky and around the mines, turning off all operations as the equipment short-circuited.

When Rey finished, twinkles of blue light still flickered around the room for a while before fading. Looking around, she saw that everyone had passed out. With a scream, she kneeled down to her family and Lin. Relieved to see them breathing, she shook them awake and hugged them all into a tight ball, letting her breathing steady.

When they heard the first ones of their hosts starting to recover, they sat up in their chairs again, around the shattered conference table. Two people were right away by the sides of the managing director, helping her sit up and arrange what was left of her cape as neatly as possible. Rey drilled her eyes straight into hers and said:

“And now you will write a kriffing new work contract for everyone. I will… Master Solo will tell you exactly what to write there.”

Ben told Rey through the bond that he would make her pay for this later. This was exactly why he had been against them trying this stunt on their own. He knew that whatever he would say now, the lawyers of Haysian Mining Corporation would find a way to twist and interpret it so that they could continue just as usual.

As the secretary ran out to pick up a functioning datapad, he let out a final desperate pledge through the Force: “Mom, help me, please. I have no idea what to do.” Still no response.

Jae looked at his closed eyes and clenched forehead. She realized what he was doing and wondered why it was not working. Deciding that he possibly was just not loud enough, she joined in, lighting up her Force signature in all its colors in a shameless cry for help.

That Leia heard. She appeared with elegance at the end of what used to be the conference table. The whole room shimmered with her bluish light under the stars, in the eyes of Ben, Rey and Jae who could see it. As the secretary returned, she walked straight through Leia while making her way around the table shards.

Leia told them word by word what should be written and what clauses to add to prevent any twisting. And Ben repeated every clause to the secretary.

\- - - - -

Before leaving Hays Minor, they still instructed Temiri to supervise the signing of the new work contracts as well as the establishment of a labor union and its negotiations with the management. They arranged also legal assistance to be sent to Temiri’s aid, realizing now how much he would have needed it since the beginning of his assignment.

The following night, when Jae and Lin crammed again on the same bunk on the Falcon, Jae had a thousand questions about the way she had seen Lin say a casual goodbye to Temiri.

“So are you just friends now? You could have stayed here for some more time, right? I could take care of the gallery.”

“I guess I could stay. But I got my most important thing done on Hays. The workers have hope of a better future now. With Temiri, I don’t think we’ll have much future.”

Jae raised her eyebrows, hungry for more details.

“There was really nothing wrong. He’s a perfect guy in many ways. He could listen to me for hours and would take me out for amazing dates. We visited every moon in the Otomok system. You wouldn’t believe how beautiful those moons are, when the planets in Otomok are so polluted. But he could even make the life on Hays feel… how to describe it… gentle and loving. And he would touch me in all the right ways. I don’t know if your parents teach it in their school or what, but he certainly was flawless with touching, both through the Force and through his actual hands and mouth, you know. But there was always something missing. No passion. No electricity. Nothing like when you touched me then at our beach house.”

Jae understood. She knew what Lin meant with touch without electricity. And for her, too, Lin was the only person with whom she had experienced the opposite. But for the time being, she was still hesitant and protective against any transition in her friendship with Lin, which was her most cherished relationship.

So for now, she just gave her an understanding and loving smile and said through the Force, hoping that she would be able to hear in some way, just like she had been able to feel her touch: “I love you, but I’m not ready for that conversation right now. Please give me a bit more time and I’m yours.”


End file.
